The new cultivar is a product of a planned breeding program. The objectives of the planned breeding program were to develop new Trifolium varieties with interesting foliage for ornamental purposes. The breeding program was developed under the direction of the co-inventors, Takayuki Kobayashi and Kazunori Sato, in Japan. The new variety originated from a cross pollination of the seed parent, an unpatented, unnamed, proprietary variety of Trifolium repens and the pollen parent, a different unpatented, unnamed, proprietary variety of Trifolium repens. The crossing was made during 2007.
The new variety was selected by the inventors, Takayuki Kobayashi and Kazunori Sato, in September 2011 in a group of seedlings resulting from the crossing. The new cultivar was selected in a non-commercial greenhouse in Japan.
Asexual reproduction of the new cultivar ‘TFLRE04-0’ was first performed at a non-commercial greenhouse in Japan by vegetative cuttings in March 2012. More than 5 generations have been reproduced by vegetative cuttings. Subsequently, propagation has also been performed by tissue culture. Both methods have shown that the unique features of this cultivar are stable and reproduced true to type.